Stranger At Home (18 page)

Joan said suddenly, “You can't take her.”

“But I must.”

Angie said, “Job. What...?”

“He turned himself in at the sheriff's office,” Trehearne told her. “They got in touch with me at home, and I went over. We questioned Job a little on this Bryce confession. There were a few holes in his story, and he fell right through 'em. After that it was easy. Lushes don't make good liars. They can't think straight.”

Vickers said, “I was afraid of that.”

Trehearne's gaze held a black contempt. “Were you going to let him take the rap for her?”

Vickers moved a little closer. “You answer that yourself, Trehearne.”

After a moment Trehearne said, “All right, I'll withdraw that.”

“Thank you.” Vickers' tone had ice on it, and in spite of himself, Trehearne flushed. Vickers went on. “I only hoped he could keep you away from Angie long enough to find out the truth.”

“This looks like a pretty good substitute.”

“It's still not true.”

“Of course,” Trehearne said, “the burden of proof rests with us. But this will do until something better comes along. Eye-witnesses do help.”

“He was drunk.”

“We'll have to let the jury worry about that.” He turned, with that surprising hint of a bow. “Are you ready, Mrs. Vickers?”

“I –“ She seemed a bit dazed. The words were slow in coming. “I guess so.”

Trehearne said, “Will one of you get her coat, please?”

Joan said, “Wait.” There was something curiously authoritative about her. She went up to Trehearne. “You don't want Mrs. Vickers. You want me. I'm the woman he saw with Harry Bryce.”

Angie began suddenly to blink back tears. Trehearne sighed.

“The woman had black hair, Mrs. Merrill.”

Joan put her hand up and ran it across the smooth light waves of her hair. “I had a black snood over it. A jersey one. It's shaped like a long bob. I can show it to you.”

Angie said, “Darling, please, it's no use. You weren't even down there until the next morning.”

“But I was. I...”

Vickers said, “You were in bed when I left here, Joan.” His voice held a note of gentleness it had never had before in the nine years of Joan's employment.

Joan reached out to Trehearne. “I tell you I was there. You've got to believe me. I...”

He cut her short, with the utmost sympathy. “Look, Mrs. Merrill. I appreciate how you feel. But I've had one phoney confession tonight. That's enough.”

Vickers took Joan by the shoulders. “There's nothing you can do now, old girl.” She was beginning to show symptoms of incipient hysteria. He attempted to guide her to a chair and she turned on him suddenly, clawing at his face. Her eyes blazed. They were quite empty of sense.

“Why don't you confess?” she said. Her voice was less a voice than a subhuman hissing. “Why don't you confess?”

Vickers caught her wrists. She had an amazing strength. She stood perfectly rigid, fighting his grip with her arms only.

“You killed him. Why don't you confess? Why don't you...”

Her legs gave out. She sank toward the floor, still looking up, her eyes burning, fixed on Vickers' face. Her lips went on forming the words. No sound came. Vickers picked her up and laid her on the couch. She did not seem to be breathing. Her jaws were clamped shut, and her skin had a dusky bluish tinge.

Angie took her hands. “Joan,” she said. “Joan, baby...” Vickers had gone after brandy. Trehearne came to the couch and looked down at Joan. He smiled reassuringly into Angie's frightened eyes. Then he leaned over and dealt Joan a smart whack on the diaphragm. She gasped, opened her mouth, and began to breathe.

Trehearne said, “My kids do that when they get mad. Used to scare hell out of my wife. She thought they were dying. Now she just swats 'em.”

He smiled, but there was no humor in his eyes. He watched somberly while Vickers helped Joan to sip brandy. He said, for no apparent reason,

“By the way, Harriet Crandall isn't dead. He gave her a hell of a beating, but she'll live.”

Angie said, “That's good. Oh, that's good.” She got up and stood uncertainly by Trehearne, watching Vickers. Joan rolled over with her back to the room and began to cry, quietly. Vickers straightened. He glanced at Trehearne, who nodded, and Vickers took Angie in his arms.

“It's all right, darling,” he said softly. He smoothed her hair back and kissed her, tenderly, as though she were a small child frightened by some shadow. “Don't worry. Nothing is going to happen to you.”

She whispered, “I didn't do it.”

“Of course not.” He gave her a last quick pressure, his hands strong and comforting on her shoulders. “Now,” he said. “Let's get your coat and go along.”

Trehearne said quietly, “Not you, Vickers.”

Vickers studied him, apparently deciding whether or not to make an issue of it, then went docilely to the hall closet and came back with a soft tweed coat, which he put around Angie's shoulders.

He said matter-of-factly, “I'll get hold of Sam right away. Now go along, sweet, and don't worry.”

She gave him a vague fleeting smile and went out with Trehearne and the other men. At the doorway Trehearne stopped and looked back. There was something slyly triumphant about him. Nothing overt, nothing you could put your finger on, but it was there. He nodded to Vickers.

“I'll be seeing you,” he said, “old boy!”

He went out and closed the door. Vickers stood still in the hallway, listening to the low voices outside, and the starting of the car, and the going away of it down the drive. He put his hand out against the wall and closed his eyes. Coolin came and stood close against his thigh, and whimpered. Vickers shook his head, winced, and went again into the living room.

Joan still had her back to the room. She seemed quiet. Vickers got more brandy, and when he came back to her she was lying flat, looking up at him. Her face was tear­streaked and unfamiliar, crumpled with grief.

“You let them take her,” she said.

He held out the brandy. “This will help.”

She made no move to take it. Her eyes were steady, dark and terribly accusing.

“You let them take her.”

“I can,” he said. “Please.”

“Why did you come back, Michael? Why couldn't you have been really dead?” Her voice had the flat monotony of exhaustion. “You've brought nothing but trouble.”

He said quietly, “I haven't meant to.” He thrust the glass toward her. “Here, drink this. We've got to get busy.”

She reached out and took the glass, slowly. She was still looking at him, but something about her, subtly, had changed. She had retreated from him. She had drawn her thoughts back within herself and pulled a curtain across them so that he should not see what they were.

He said, “I want to thank you for what you did.”

She dropped her eyes. “I might have known that no one would believe me.”

Vickers knew suddenly that she was afraid of him.

He got up and went over to the table for a cigarette. He managed to watch her, obliquely, while she thought his back was turned. She did not touch. the brandy. Instead, she hid the glass behind a bowl of flowers on the end table. When he turned around again she had risen and was coming toward him.

She said, “We had better go and call Sam.”

Vickers nodded. They went together to the den to telephone the lawyer.

#Later, in her room upstairs, Joan Merrill placed a small suitcase open on the bed. From the darkest corner of the closet she pulled out the oyster-white housecoat she had worn on the night of Vickers' return. There were irregular brown stains on the front of the long skirt. Joan carefully avoided touching them as she folded the garment and laid it in the bag.

She went to the bureau and found a snood of soft black jersey, which she put on, covering her hair. She threw on a light coat, closed the bag, and turned off the lamp. In the darkness she went to the window and peered out, being careful not to move the curtains sharply.

Her room overlooked the rear terrace and the swimming pool. Vickers was there. He was walking up and down, his head bent, his shoulders slack and bowed. He paused once to light a cigarette from the glowing end of another, then went on, trailing a white plume of smoke over his shoulder. The hounds slipped like gray shadows across the lawn, passed him, and were gone.

Joan Merrill left the window. She picked up the bag and went very quietly out of her room and down the stairs and out of the house by the front door. She tiptoed across the drive and then, when she was on the grass, she began to run, soundlessly, toward the gate.

She was in an agony of fear lest the hounds see her and bring Michael around. They did not. She slipped through the gate and walked rapidly along the curving street. A man watched her from the concealment of the heavy shrubbery. After she was out of sight he stepped out and began to follow her.

A second man, also concealed, yawned and scratched himself. He sat in the angle of a brick retaining wall, so that no one could approach him except from the front. His coat was wide open and the gun under his armpit was loose in the holster.

#Vickers continued to walk up and down the terrace. He knew vaguely that it was dark and quite cold and that he should go in and get a coat. He did not go in and get a coat. His cigarette, burned down to a bare half inch, scorched his lips. He threw it away, took three turns of the terrace, and stopped to light another one. The match made a bright yellow flare. From somewhere out in the night came a sharp bang. It sounded like a rifle. The bullet that clipped past Vickers' left ear could have been a rifle bullet. Vickers blew out the match. He moved, just ahead of the second bang. The bullet this time went very wide.

Vickers began to run, out across the lawn.

Outside the gate the plainclothesmen jumped up. One of them signaled to the other and left his post. He entered Vickers' grounds, running toward the sound of the shots.

Vickers yelled for the hounds. For the first time he became acutely conscious of the fact that there was damned little cover on his rear slope. He passed the edge of the swimming pool. The water looked leaden, very still, very cold. The hounds came tearing up to him. He spoke to them, waved them on. They shot ahead of him, toward the tangled line of shrubbery that linked the row of Lombardy poplars and marked the edge of his land. Beyond the shrubs and the poplars was a ravine. It dropped down about sixty feet on his side, and rose about half that distance on the other side to a hilltop that was still bare and wild.

Coolin and Molly vanished through the trees.

Vickers wasn't far behind them. He plunged through the clawing bushes and paused a moment, squinting down into the pitch black ravine. He couldn't see anything. But he could hear-a confused soft flurry of movement, furtive yet intense; the panting of the hounds, eager and rather horrible; and an abrupt terrified squealing that might have been human and probably was. It stopped. Vickers smiled. He didn't say anything. The hounds knew their business. He began to scramble down the ravine wall with perilous speed. The plainclothesman had by this time reached the swimming pool and stopped.

Coolin was making little tender crooning sounds in his throat. Vickers followed them. He made out a shapeless blob of substance, went to it, and resolved out of it two shapes sitting upon and all but hiding a third. He struck a match and bent to examine the third shape. It looked back at him. It had a plump face. It was breathing heavily and the fear of God was on it.

“Sessions,” said Vickers.

The little man twitched. Coolin laid his nose gently against Sessions' cheek and struck an enquiring tenor note. The little man ceased to twitch. Vickers shook the match out carefully and sat down. His hand encountered the stock of a rifle where it had been dropped. He picked it up and laid it across his knees.

“I assume,” he said, “that this is the second time you've had a shot at me.”

Sessions did not answer.

“Coolin,” said Vickers. “Let the man breathe.” He tapped the animal's shoulder. Coolin withdrew from Sessions' chest and crouched instead beside him. He seemed to be very fond of Mr. Sessions. Molly lay across his legs, staring fixedly at his round plump middle, which was heaving up and down in an enticing fashion.

Sessions said, “All right. Yes.”

“You hate me very much, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you, also, love Angie?”

“Don't be disgusting.”

“I only wondered. I thought you might have killed Harry Bryce. Two birds with one stone.”

“I was at home with my wife. The police have already checked that.”

Vickers sighed. “What a good little man you are. Home with your wife. But next day you were trying to shoot me with a rifle from my own sporting goods section. Why? Has the virtuous little Mr. Sessions been doing tricks with account books, perhaps?”

Sessions didn't answer.

“How much have you got away with?”

Sessions didn't answer.

“Quite a lot, I imagine.”

Sessions didn't answer.

“I hope so,” said Vickers. “I've no patience with piddling crimes. If you're going to commit one, do it up right. Give it to charity, Sessions, and we'll forget about it – this time.”

Sessions tried to answer, and couldn't.

Vickers said, “That isn't the reason you tried to kill me, though. Not really.”

Sessions said uneasily, “Vick...”

“You've been top dog since I went away. You've been Michael Vickers, Incorporated. Not Mr. Vickers' whipping boy, but the works. Rather a nice feeling. Made a man of you. Let the old ego sprout wings. I'll bet you haven't been insulted in four years. Power and freedom are pleasant things, aren't they, Sessions?”

“Yes, damn you,” said Sessions. “Yes, they are.”